How many wins to get a wild card, and do we have that team?

[Hendrix]

After the big moves by AA, and an extra wild card, I was feeling pretty good about this team moving forward, but thought we still needed a SP, and at the least, a guy to platoon with Lind to really fill this team out and cement a playoff spot (as best you can anyways). Now that other teams are making moves, and we haven't, I'm wondering; how do we stack up if we end up going into the season with this team?

The Rays lost Shields which will hurt them a bit, but they also under-performed last year, and had a 95 pyth W. So, they still look like a 90+ win team.

The Yanks are getting older, and will lose a couple pieces, but they are also the Yanks, and could make some moves. Also, they were a 95 win team last year.

Boston under-performed last year, and has added Napoli, and Dempster. I wouldn't peg them as a 90+ team at the moment, but if they make another move, and some players rebound, I'd say they could be right there contending for 90+ wins, and a wild card.

I don't really see anyone from the Central contending for a wild card at the moment, but in the west you have

The Angels were an 89 win team last year and just took a step forward with signing Hamilton.

Oakland won the division with 94 wins last year and don't look like they are going anywhere.

Texas lost Napoli, and Hamilton. But they have a lot of other pieces, won 93 last year, and have lots of cash to throw around. They'll probably make some more moves to help make up for what they lost.



So, I'm seeing about 3-4 90+ win teams out there vying for the wild card spots. I'd be surprised if a team gets into the playoffs with less than 93 wins (ignoring the central). Do we have the team to do that? I'm pretty sure if everything goes 100% right for the team we could do that (though you could say that about tons of teams, and everything rarely goes right), but how much buffer room do we have if stuff goes wrong? Do we still need to make moves, or do you feel comfortable going into the season with the team as currently constructed?

[vaff87]

The Jays have as good a chance as anybody in the AL right now. There is still plenty of offseason left, but I don't think any AL team is without pretty major question marks as of today.

[s e n s i]

if everything goes 100% right for this team then i think we can win the division straight-up, because think about it...100% right would mean 80+ jacks between bautista/ee, lawrie improves, healthy reyes and johnson, buerhle and morrow throw 200+ innings, romero reverts back to at least career norms, melky proves that PED's dont do sh*t, rasmus improves, bullpen does their job...to hell with a wild card berth, this team would win it all if that all came to fruition.

i don't think we need to have a perfect season to merely squeak into a play-in game. even if things go 80% right, sustain a couple DL stints here and there, i think this team will still be competing well into september. you could make the argument that even if everything went 100% right for last season's team (no injuries to morrow, bautista, lawrie, hutchison, perez, santos. no regression from escobar/johnson, romero has an average season, etc.) it would have made a WC berth, and it was far less talented on paper than this years roster.

we got a real damn good shot here even without any additions imo. i think a better question would be how many wins would it take to win the AL east because that's surely what we're gunning for at this point with a really dangerous line-up (1-5 batters could potentially be the best in the league, also remember that this team was consistently top 3 in runs scored in all of baseball until almost august? that was without reyes and cabrera) and a rotation anchored by josh johnson and brandon morrow...yikes man

[Hendrix]

if everything goes 100% right for this team then i think we can win the division straight-up, because think about it...100% right would mean 80+ jacks between bautista/ee, lawrie improves, healthy reyes and johnson, buerhle and morrow throw 200+ innings, romero reverts back to at least career norms, melky proves that PED's dont do sh*t, rasmus improves, bullpen does their job...to hell with a wild card berth, this team would win it all if that all came to fruition.

i don't think we need to have a perfect season to merely squeak into a play-in game. even if things go 80% right, sustain a couple DL stints here and there, i think this team will still be competing well into september. you could make the argument that even if everything went 100% right for last season's team (no injuries to morrow, bautista, lawrie, hutchison, perez, santos. no regression from escobar/johnson, romero has an average season, etc.) it would have made a WC berth, and it was far less talented on paper than this years roster.

Yes, I think we win if everything goes 100% right. But, I also think that same thing can be said for the Rays or the Yanks, or even Boston. I'm wondering more about what we can expect from all of these teams (including our own), and how we stack up against that.

we got a real damn good shot here even without any additions imo. i think a better question would be how many wins would it take to win the AL east because that's surely what we're gunning for at this point with a really dangerous line-up (1-5 batters could potentially be the best in the league, also remember that this team was consistently top 3 in runs scored in all of baseball until almost august? that was without reyes and cabrera) and a rotation anchored by josh johnson and brandon morrow...yikes man

I don't really see a heck of a lot of difference between winning the AL, and winning a WC. Like maybe 2-3 games difference. So, I guess I'm just wondering what the minimum # of wins it will take from us to get into the playoffs, and if we have the team to do that.

Also, I don't think we are near the best 1-5 in the league. The Angels have Trout (.963ops),Hamilton (.930ops), Pujols (.859ops), Hunter (.817ops), Trumbo (.808ops). I would say all those guys are more proven too for the most part, where we have some guys in the .700's in the top 5, and some big question marks in EE, and Melky. You could probably make a case for Yanks, and Tigers being in there too.

From what I remember we were kind of lucky to be as high as we were in terms of runs last year at that point. On the season we posted a team OPS+ of 93 (2nd last in AL), yet finished 7th in runs.

I think you are right that we'll be competing well into September, and we have as good of a shot as anyone. But, there seems like quite a bit of competition out there now (more-so-than-before). So if we have just as good of a shot as anyone, and there's this many teams in the hunt, 50% of them are going to miss the playoffs. I'm wondering if we need to do more here. I'd really hate to see Rogers finally spend $, and finally see Blue Jays fever from fans, only to have it all crushed by missing the playoffs with 89 wins.

[Gibby]

It's going to be tough, people are sleeping on Boston. They had a lot of injuries last year, and some of the keystones there had pretty terrible seasons, which they aren't likely to repeat. I'd say 85+ wins is a real possibility for them.

Baltimore was extremely lucky last year, I think I remember that there bullpen ERA was historically low. That won't happen again, and I expect them to finish around the bottom of the East.

[s e n s i]

hunter plays for the tigers now.

wouldn't really say EE is a "big" question mark as he's been raking since like august 2011. he's good for a minimum of 30 jacks and an .800 OPS i'd say.

as already mentioned, every team in the AL has question marks and no team is really on a tier of it's own. in my personal, semi-homerish opinion, i think this team is capable of winning 92+ games while not having absolutely everything break our way in a 2012 orioles kinda way.

[Hendrix]

I forgot about Hunter, but I still think the Angels have the best top 5 in the AL. I'd say 1) Angels, 2) Tigers, 3) Jays/Yanks.

To me, EE is still a question mark. On one hand, his season does look legit. It wasn't buoyed by an unsustainable babip, he had great average distances for HR's, and flyballs, didn't take a huge jump in bb%, and k%. But, on the other hand, he's never had a 30hr season before this, and his previous .800ops seasons are few and far between. So, I have a tough time being completely sold after just 1 year I guess. Maybe I'm just being overly cautious.

I guess I'm just not 100% sure. We're going to have to have better records than atleast 3 teams out of the group of Yanks, Rays, Angels, A's, Sox, and Rangers. That's not looking like a super easy task atm imo. Achievable, but it's a question mark, and I'd feel a lot more comfortable with some more moves because adding a few more WAR to this team could make a huge difference.

[s e n s i]

which is why i used the word "potentially" in regards to 1-5 in the order. a typical jose reyes season, a 2011-2012-ish season for melky, another prime year of bautista, a 30-35 HR 800+OPS season for edwin, and an improvement from lawrie and its

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36BvyC_ODRM[/youtube]

but i digress...as it would be amazing for that to all happen. but i don't necessarily think it needs to for this team to be playing into the second week of october.

[flatjacket1]

I took all of the Bill James projections and converted them into fWAR, then compared the Blue Jays to a replacement level team. We are supposed to win in the neighborhood of 92-96 games if Bill James is correct. The reason the range is so large is because I haven't done the bullpen predictions yet. Starting pitchers and position players combine for 91.8 wins.

[Chevy Chase]

What you forget is that if you have the Rays and Angles adding more wins and both Boston and Toronto adding many more wins, someone has to lose.

With better teams throughout the league it will take more just to get the same number of wins from last year. I'd look for the Yanks, Athletics and Orioles to take a step back. Boston won't add many wins while Toronto will probably make the WC. But then again what do I know?

[Hendrix]

I took all of the Bill James projections and converted them into fWAR, then compared the Blue Jays to a replacement level team. We are supposed to win in the neighborhood of 92-96 games if Bill James is correct. The reason the range is so large is because I haven't done the bullpen predictions yet. Starting pitchers and position players combine for 91.8 wins.

Just out of curiosity, how did you do this?

For example, at Catcher Bill James has JPA playing 116 games, and Buck playing 119 even though there is 162 games available to them at C. And, in the OF for example he has Bautista @ 153 games, Melky @ 148 games, Rasmus @ 149 games, Gose @148 games, and Davis @ 100 games. So those guys total 698 games, even though there is 486 games available in the outfield.

[Skin Blues]

I think somebody ran the numbers on the AL teams based on Bill James' projections and every team had tons of wins. The Royals with like 94 wins, and the Tigers with 102. This being due to Bill James' projections being generally optimistic across the board.

[James_Raptors]

I see us as an 87 win team and I think we need one more decent move.

[N31L]

We were an 86 win team a couple years ago with a much worse team on paper. That's not to say, however, the other AL teams haven't gotten better; they pretty much all have. If all goes to plan, I think we can wil 85-90 games. No more than 90 games. I think our only chance is the second wild card spot. Texas, Rays, Yankees, Angels, I think are all better than us. Because the central division has been so bad, none of their teams are going to make the WC. It looks as if we are going to have to beat one of the teams I mentioned earlier, along with other possible factors: Red Sox + possible dark horses in Mariners/A's, Royals, and the O's.

[Test of Wills]

Those inter-league games against teams like the Rockies, Padres, Braves and D-Backs are going to be critical.

Dont sleep on the AL Central. The Tigers are talented but ultimately pushed by teams like Royals and White Sox.

[flatjacket1]

I took all of the Bill James projections and converted them into fWAR, then compared the Blue Jays to a replacement level team. We are supposed to win in the neighborhood of 92-96 games if Bill James is correct. The reason the range is so large is because I haven't done the bullpen predictions yet. Starting pitchers and position players combine for 91.8 wins.

Just out of curiosity, how did you do this?

For example, at Catcher Bill James has JPA playing 116 games, and Buck playing 119 even though there is 162 games available to them at C. And, in the OF for example he has Bautista @ 153 games, Melky @ 148 games, Rasmus @ 149 games, Gose @148 games, and Davis @ 100 games. So those guys total 698 games, even though there is 486 games available in the outfield.

I spent 2 days constructing a pitching fWAR calculator and made a form of my own position player fWAR calculator. Then, I input the numbers from 2012, checked the real fWAR from the calculator and the % difference was then applied to the final fWAR I achieved through the calculator to adjust to reflect the player as accurately as possible.

What I did was selected the opening day starter (JPA in that case) and split up the remaining PA/GP between the remaining catchers, and calculated d'Arnaud as "replacement level" and getting a minority. The numbers were paced out over what I thought was accurate. Also, the order in which they batted was taken into a count, so obviously SS received the highest PA due to Reyes batting leadoff. There was a 2.7% difference between each batting position, so if a guy gets 500 PA at the 8 slot, he'd go up 13.5 PA by moving up 1 slot over 162 games.

It still seems inflated due to the optimism of Bill James, but realize that players like Melky he expected to literally fall of the face of the planet. It just goes to show that if the luck dragons are on the Jays side next year, how much we can kick butt.